Welcome to my Ozark Blog Cabin

Hilaire Belloc

July 11, 2010

I love being a Catholic. The photo above was not set up at all... just a
collection of stuff that happened to be there this morning: my favorite
pipe, some smoking paraphernalia, prayer book, Rosary and G.K.
Chesterton coffee mug. Later tonight, I suppose I should take another
photo, only there will likely be a glass of wine instead of the coffee.

There are hedges that need trimming, and half a hundred small chores that cry for attention, but The Boss jovially insisted I take the whole day off and drop by His House later to see him.

Sunday is also a great day to read all the poems Pavel Chichikov has sent through the week. Like a good meal, it takes a little leisure to give them proper attention.

November 05, 2009

Somanylittleindicators, lately, that it's time to do this. I've been sitting on it for a while, but the world should no longer have to go on without The League of Bearded Catholics.

I started thinking about the need for such a thing years ago, as I began to notice that a lot of my favorite Catholics (like, say, on EWTN and elsewhere) were becoming more, shall we say, follically assertive. A significant number of Catholic men I most admired, I noticed, were sporting beards. I won't begin dropping names, yet, but they are many. I remember taking note of this (again), one day and thinking to myself, "There should be some kind of club... a brotherhood of hairy-faced Catholic dudes.".

I see this new enthusiasm for facial growth to be a very hopeful sign, an indication that, not only are Catholic men again embracing the God-given grace of manhood, but the whole Church in the West (or at least in America) may be re-discovering the testosterone that had been mysteriously drained over the last several decades. This transcends matters of mere sex, though. You see signs of a new boldness and intellectual vigor among prominent orthodox Catholic women just as you do in men. Catholic women bloggers are some of my favorite reads.

I'll be putting together a core group here in the Ozarks (those I can tempt with beer and cheese) that can serve as a sort of ad hoc national hub, but please don't think of this as another Catholic men's organization. Anyone can tell you, I'm far too disorganized to start an organization. My hope and my aim is that we will be something like the opposite of an organization. Organizations are too stuffy and are the enemy of fun. And budgets make my head hurt.

The idea is not even to be affiliated in any official capacity with the Catholic Church, or with any local parish. We of TLBC are Catholic primarily in character and sympathy and flavor, not in structure. Our local parish priests will certainly be invited, though. Our structure might be described as "amoebic" (as in "amoebic dysentery").

Nor is it strictly necessary that all in attendance have beards (though that will be encouraged), or that they even be men. A beard, however, will be necessary to gain admittance to all League meetings, without exception. This is one of the few hard and fast Rules of the League. That means that, for those without beards, one will be provided.

Naturally, the Lost Art of Catholic Drinking will be pursued (very important for warding off amoebic dysentery), so you could think of it as Promoting the Arts.

Finally, the name of the League was the subject of some research (okay, not a lot) as well as spirited debate. It happens that the letters TLBC may also stand for Tolkien, Lewis, Belloc and Chesterton, and the writings of these brilliant Brits will form a cornerstone of all League meetings, with members bringing favorite passages to read aloud, book recommendations, reviews and discussion, in a manner that can be instantly recognized as the opposite of a study group. The idea is not to study, the idea is to enjoy the writing of these men, and any others tangentially related to them, who influenced them, or who were influenced by them.

Look for a new TLBC Blog next week, with a pretty much arbitrary list of League Rules and By-Laws, articles, t-shirts, stickers, mugs and similar folderol.

July 28, 2009

For those who may despair over all the grievous flaws of the Church, take heart. Hilaire Belloc famously observed that the Church was... "an institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight.".

June 26, 2009

Sean at The Blue Boar posts a delightfully bracing excerpt from Hilaire Belloc's The Four Men, which you really should read. In it, a wan and tepid ascetic (The Poet) is taken to task by his companions, because of his pessimistic and puritanical denial of the essential goodness of Creation.

Not that there is not room for asceticism... far from it! But the discipline of the flesh should always affirm and never deny the greatness of God's creative work in nature. All desire - properly understood - is a desire for God. The point of mastering our desires is to properly orient them to their ultimate source - the Creator God - not to deny them altogether.

As I said in Sean's combox;

Life
in Christ means *real* life... with what C.S. Lewis called "some blood
and sap in it". Not the negation of desire (as the Buddha proclaimed),
but the fulfillment of every true and eternal desire of the human
spirit.

Every false desire is simply one of these true desires
twisted back on itself. The Gospel does not kill desire, but untwists
our desires to make them straight and true again ("true" in this sense
like a well-planed board, or the path of a well-crafted arrow), so that
we may follow them to their source... the creator God, One in Three.

December 18, 2008

From a blog new to me, called Owl of the Remove, comes this pithy sermon from Hilaire Belloc on the evils of not drinking;

"For who can be properly nourished, if indeed he be of human stock,
without wine? St. Paul said to someone who had consulted him (without
remembering that, unlike St. Luke, he was no physician), 'Take a little
wine for your stomach's sake.' But I say, take plenty of it for the
sake of your soul and all that appertains to the soul: scholarship;
verse; social memory and the continuity of all culture. There may be
excess in wine; as there certainly is in spirits and champagne, but in
wine one rarely comes across it; for it seems to me that true wine
rings a bell and tells you when you have had enough. But there is
certainly such a thing as a deficiency of wine; and such a deficiency
is one of the most awful ravenous beasts that can fasten upon a living
soul..."

The title of this post references this classic Monty Python sketch (brought to you through the courtesy of the Philosophy Department of Australia's University of Woolloomooloo).